Becoming a Web 2.0 "Expert"

As another Web 2.0 experiment I now have lijit temporarily included within this webblog. So now theoretically del.icio.us, blinklist, diigo and ma.gnolia can all be linked together which is good for disseminating information across a larger audience so communication is potentially enhanced is but is still basically repeating information. Seems that I also have or had a furl account, which is another tagging system, though I don't actually remember signing up. It also includes digg though I have still not dugg anything. The widget also includes some flicker photos which I may not leave up. I am not Elvis. The del.icio.us link works whether or not I am signed in, but of course I already have the del.icio.us tag cloud. Blinklist only works if I am signed in and it doesn't recognize my ma.gnolia account.

What lijit does do from a social networking perspective is connect me with others who are deemed "experts". This of course depends upon the pool of people they have which seems a bit limited. For the test run search economics innovation "find an expert" search they have me listed second. I am sure that is higher than it should be. Expert is the wrong term particularly for myself. Using the term happiness for the same type search Guy Kawasaki, who was cited in a recent post on money, happiness and connections, is listed third. Blinklist also lets me check out "experts", though sometimes they use the term "top contributers" or "matching users" which is closer to the truth. As their recent e-mail to me stated.

On BlinkList, you can also check out what other people
are discovering every day. In fact, if you go to any
of your own tags, you will always see the who the Top
BlinkList Experts are for any given topic.

By checking out other BlinkList users, you will see
an entire world of discovery open up and rapidly start
to discover sites that you could have never discovered
before.

Using their search for economics innovation there are 20 users listed as matching and I am not listed which is more believable though it does not attest to the actual expertise of those listed.

I am getting better at editing xhtml and have been able to re-edit embedded videos that didn't work so that they did. Seth Godin provides another resources with SEO for bloggers via Seth's Blog Seth Godin on 11/26/07.

A lot of useful insight (and a great example in itself of how to acquire traffic!)

Still need to get back to learning about mashups.

UPDATE: Went back to blinklist and made my all of my blinks public. I am now a blinklist economics "expert". Seems expertise is based on number of links on a particular subject. There are though some of my links for which I have to question applying the tag "economics".

Congress And Everybody Else Looking For A Culprit For Rising Prices

My web-trekking explorations are back on economics. The self-educational pursuit has to stop during my time in Nanjing, China because for various reasons I can't get to the Berkeley macro-economics videos that I had been following. There are though a number of posts from other sites that provide me food for thought.

It may seem obvious that there is a difference between economics and business, though coming up with a quick answer may not be that easy. Perhaps it's the difference between recession and depression, it depends on whether it's happening to you or other people.

Is it Inflation or a Bubble? is an economic question asked by the Small Business Trends expert Anita Campell.

Rising prices hurt us because we are people … consumers … above all else.

But as businesspeople, the situation can be even worse if you happen to be in one of those businesses that use the commodities and materials experiencing record-high prices right now.

This is a direct business concern, creating what could turn into a vicious cycle as those higher prices are passed on to the end-use consumers with little supposed benefit to the business producers.

Think of food (restaurants); gasoline (businesses with fleets and delivery vehicles); and high heating costs (landlords and real-estate related businesses).

She asks the larger economic question whether inflation was the real worry, rather than recession. But after digging into the question a little further, it appears that the question of high prices is more complex than simply inflation.

Charles Schwab Town Hall meeting, Chief Investment Strategist Liz Ann Sonders suggesting that there is a bubble taking place in commodities, spurred partly by speculators. That seems to be contributing to the rising prices of certain categories such as food and gasoline. (She mentions commodities speculation in this Wall Street Journal interview, too.)

Ms Campbell goes on to address another economic question. Consider this: while the prices of food and fuel have skyrocketed, the prices of some things keep coming down. It's not a question of inflation across the board. It's really a matter of some things being at record highs, and others being at record lows.

What do you think is happening? Weigh in with your opinion about: Technology Prices Defy Inflation (So Far)

The area she focuses on for this crowd-sourced analysis is technology. My hypothesis is that its the ability of technology to increase productivity following Moore and other so-called laws. As long as this happens there will be lower costs, though how long this will happen is another technical question. It is also how business people from entrepreneurs to secretaries in corporate offices use this technology. That according to the Berkeley macro-economic class is where the majority of the productivity boost comes from.

But what happens to tech productivity if you can't feed those enginners beer and pizza.

Back to the direct business concerns.

Consequently, some small businesses are being hurt more than others in the current environment. If your business happens to depend heavily on commodities — say you run a pizza shop and depend on flour and cheese — you are being hit hard. But if you are in a business that relies primarily on technology, then your costs of doing business may be low.

Ms. Campbell is not alone is looking for culprits for rising prices, according to this New York Times article BUSINESS June 25, 2008 By JAD MOUAWADs, Congress Looks for a Culprit for Rising Oil Prices. This expert doesn't follow the same line of thinking as Strategist Liz Ann Sonders when it comes to oil prices.

A pre-eminent energy expert is to testify on Wednesday before lawmakers that the suspicion that investors are a large cause for skyrocketing oil prices is misguided.

"Everyone would like to believe that there is a silver bullet — like a bubble or speculation — that can solve our oil problem," he said. Instead, he said, it would be better for the nation to focus on conserving energy and reducing its oil consumption.

My last post looked at the effect of the commodities upheaval on the poor. The Financial Times article Food crisis is a chance to reform global agriculture, cited in the post, provided additional insights from a number of economists including Paul Collier and Bart van Ark who wrote in response to the article.

We need to examine the two phenomena – increased shortages due to a decline in the growth of supply, and price increases related to speculation and securitization of several commodities – in conjunction to fully understand what has happened and what is likely to happen next. There is no question that the securitization of various food commodity markets in early 2007 has played an important role in this crisis, especially over recent months. The mean of the price increases of securitized agricultural commodities (including coffee, cotton, soybean oil, soybeans, sugar, wheat, and corn) was 49 percent in the 15 months from January 2007 to April 2008, compared to 20 percent in the preceding 12 months. In comparison, prices of non-securitized agricultural commodities (including, rice, tea, cocoa and rubber) increased by only 14 percent in the last 15 months, compared to 11 percent in the 12 months before.

Despite the slower average price increase, the effects of speculation do appear to have spilled over into some of these non-securitized commodities, for example, to rice (69 percent since January 2007) and palm oil (88%). One should also ask, as Martin Wolf does: If this is truly a speculative bubble, where are the stocks of these goods? The answer is in part: still out in the fields, as future contracts deal with future harvests. In all likelihood, some of the recent price jumps stems from the perception among hedgers and investors that the harvests will disappoint.

The author of the FT article Martin Wolf, FT associate editor and chief economics commentator, argues that while:

I am grateful to Bart for his comments on securitisation and prices. I should note, however, that if futures prices are jumping because of the perception that harvests will disappoint, this is stabilising speculation. It acts to lower consumption now, thus preserving stocks.

I am unclear on how this happens unless the end user has transparent information that this is going to happen. So far, I don't see that being the case. Another philosophical and ethical question it raises for me is if the so-called speculator realizes through more insightful analysis and precise information the actual market value of the product is he gambling? Yes, there is risk, but there is a difference between statistical knowledge to understand and using tea leaves to assess the unknown. No doubt though that once somebody does benefit from a deeper understanding of the market, they are followed by those who jump on the bandwagon long after the music has stopped playing.

To finish off, I am throwing in the comments from Paul Otellini from this interveiw in the New York Times TECHNOLOGY section on June 1, 2008. You have the business, the technology and the price of oil all combined together.

Bits: Intel's Chief on Strategy, Globalization and the Price of Oil Steve Lohr
In a wide-ranging interview, Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini talks about Intel's move into processors for smaller machines, the company's new chip plant in China, the challenges of programming many-core processors and the economic impact of the rising price of oil.

A Paradigm Shift in Seeing the Potential of Paradigm Shifts

This is an old post brought over from the second incarnation of this weblog. It helps to show a small paradigm shift over time in terms of skepticism and even cynicism . I had participated in the Blog Day for the Environment action though with a good measure of skepticism. Following that effort, I decided to see if my skepticism was warranted. At one level it was but at another it turns out being right is not always the best thing. Regardless how right one is on a particular issue, one's own ignorance makes taking a position of generosity and equanimity the most optimal choice, if change is possible then improvement is possible. That does not make this wrong but it should not be the primary focus.

Using Sphere It!

• For "Blog Action Day" 975 in the last 24 hours 8,730 in the last 7 days
• For "Iraq" 2,375 in the last 24 hours 29,951 in the last 7 days
• For "Burma" 276 in the last 24 hours 4,146 in the last 7 days (Free Burma 86 in last 24)
• For "Britney Spears" 420 in the last 24 hours 5,035 in the last 7 days.

My point is not that these endeavors are a waste of time. Again, as was said before we are planting seeds. It is that grandiose worldwide attempts to use the web seem often times superficial. Not only did my feeble effort make little difference, which is quite understandable, it added only a thin veneer of connection and substance to the overall effort by simply upping the numbers. I suspect that there were few blogs which did not normally write on this subject that added any real weight to the momentum. A concerted effort by those blogs with the experience and insight into this issue working in a collaborative fashion rather than just adding numbers on might have served the cause better. Especially, if there had been some real dialogs regarding balancing environmental concerns and economic development which is both sustainable and enhances human existence. It seems that the current effort was more of a Digg-type popularity contest, "I'm for good environment" whatever that means.

I do believe that the potential to use the Internet as a collaborative tool is inherent in the system but most of what I have seen of Web 2.0 falls short of that effort. Most of what I glean from the web and pass on has already been recycled at least once before I get it. The fact that I can connect with 100,000 people and have pictures of their cats does not interest me. Ok, I am not that social. The more people or tags I add on the more superficial each connection seems to become. That's fine if my interest is only one way communication or a two way communication limited to some narrowly defined purpose such as selling something. Most "conversations" within the blogs I have witnessed are unilateral monologues with no real resolution just somebody being the last to post. This though has nothing to do with the web, it is the people using it.

I am not against blogs or the dialogs that I have participated in or a number of other online activities. I enjoy them and find them interesting and informative. Still, unless it comes from an expert in the field, and do not put myself in that category, most of what is readily available from Web 2.0 so far looks like fluff. The potential of what could be done by cooperative individuals working together however looks immense. This could take place in academic, professional and social change organizations. Perhaps I am disappointed that there is often more emphasis on overall expanse of the connections rather than the substance of those connections. There are though also glimmers of hope out there.

New Connections Online Make For New Pathways to New Paradigms

I started this whole web journey from this blog with the intention of doing nothing more than organizing weblinks that I came across on a serial basis. Now that role has evolved into being an activist, OK maybe slacktivist since all of this is still only on the web, regardless I am more linked up than I had ever envisioned. My onlineactivities continue to find synergy between the worlds of Web 2.0 social media technologies and social activism through economic development. When combined together they provide effective tools for change-agents to induce change at a grassroots social level that can then be expanded and linked with other such efforts. During this webtrek, my interests and my connections have linked me with a number of very interesting people across the globe, especially on Facebook.

One such person is Dr. Niki Lambropoulos. She is currently in England but hails from Greece. Her site says that she is an experienced HCI Education e-learning expert, researcher, consultant, HCI designer & researcher, and online communities manager. Her fields of interest include Human-Computer Interaction Education, E-Learning, and Idea Management for Distributed Leadership and User Innovation Networks.

Her specialisation (notice the English spelling, one of the efficiencies of the web is getting others to do the research and writing for you) is in Collective Intelligence theory, design and system development and covers the following fields: collaborative learning, co-creativity and community management in Computer Supported Collaborative eLearning (CSCeL); open innovation and user innovation networks in business strategic development; idea generation and distributed leadership in Project Management; and collective intelligence systems design in Human-Computer Interaction.

If one expected an aloof, computer-oriented egghead they would be very mistaken. She is very approachable online and provides a good deal of useful and interesting information. Where I find it easy to connect is that she collects the same type of links that I do from TED and other sources. She also has a strong interest in innovation. What has fascinated me most in learning about the possiblities of the web is the potential leverage it has in communication and collaboration. Dr. Lambropoulos strikes me as being at the cutting edge of this field.

She gets all of this far better than I do being able to deal with it from a meta-level of analysis. Her work with such efforts as the Special issue of Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments: Distributed Leadership & Online Communities for the London South Bank University Centre for Interactive Systems Engineering demonstrates her level of attainment.

One example is her work with Democracy Reloaded a Facebook Group which , an online experiment focused on democracy in Greece, but I believe will have application world wide. She says it is an experiment on Collective Intelligence. The aim is to identify real problems and real solutions by participatory mechanisms. A new platform is going to be released and tested in February 2010.

The difference between our efforts in Democracy Reloaded and other official participatory democracy efforts is that WE ALL produce the ideas and WE ALL make comments/suggestions/corrections.

Democracy Reloaded is a collaborative effort aiming at your immediate participation and involvement at the early stages of governance design even before the decision making. In this way you as a citizen are not reactive but active and proactive in decision making that affects your life. In particular, Democracy Reloaded aims are the following:

• Development of the Greek citizens' potential via the Democracy Reloaded platform to faciliate your direct involvement in decision planning and design.
• Focus on the the real causes of the same problems that constantly appear as news however, with different names occuring in different locations in different times.
• Fill in a gap in contemporary co-governance with the submission and publication of reports that derive from your our articles with your own ideas and comments.

I am waiting with anticipation to find out what she comes up with. I have examined a number of collaborative platforms used by the social development community under my other blog Milestones for a New Millennium but this one interests me because if seems to be a tool for citizen collaboration. If activists are to going to reach a tipping point in bringing about change, they are going to have to go beyond the committed faithful and even the well-meaning slacktivists and engage the general populous. They will need to find means of not only informing them of the issues but also engaging them in the decision process. This might be one tool that could be a help in doing so.

As part of my ever deeper immersion into the Web I am experimenting with Zemanta with this post. Some of the links and the related posts were generated by Zemanta.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Ventureneer Webinar on Brandraising™ Gives Nonprofit Leaders Strategic Communication Tool (prweb.com)
• BTM Corporation Releases BTM Works 360 v6.0 (eon.businesswire.com)
• 3 Books To Understand Social Media Even If They Don't Talk About Social Media (woorkup.com)
• "10 Tactics" you can use (digiactive.org)
• Twitter's Intelligent; Welcome to Web 3.0 (socialmediatoday.com)

China's New and Growing Role at the World Economic Table

The G20 meeting in London is set for 2 April 2009. One of the relative new and now major participants will be the People's Republic of China. Whatever happens to the World Economy, and therefore to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, will depend to a great extent upon China.

One of my news sources is the China Daily. I took a look over the last couple of weeks to see what they were putting out as news worthy in terms of world economics.

To a great extent they pull what they want from the same sources as we do. Which can mean that their information is as conflicted as ours is, depending upon who is talking.

China Daily (Xinhua) Updated: 2009-03-19 23:07
IMF: World economy to shrink in 2009, first time in 60 years

WASHINGTON - The world economy is expected to contract in 2009 for the first time in 60 years as advanced economies will shrink sharply, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday.

In the analysis, the IMF called on G20 governments to take steps to relieve their financial systems of distressed assets and free up credit.

"Turning around global growth will depend critically on more concerted policy actions to stabilize financial conditions as well as sustained strong policy support to bolster demand," the IMF said.

For a different perspective

China Daily (Agencies) Updated: 2009-03-18 16:46
ECB chief: Growth may resume in 2010

PARIS - European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet said Wednesday that economic growth could resume next year, although 2009 will be "very, very difficult." "2010 could be the year of a moderate resumption of growth, but that depends on us," he said on France's Europe-1 radio.

He said an economic recovery depends on the confidence of governments, businesses and consumers. "The essential problem is not to make predictions in an uncertain world, it is to find confidence again," Trichet said.

That seems to be saying that our only problem is that we have a bad attitude. Others have written about the Europeans refusal to follow President Obama's economic strategy. China seems to be willing to participate with the IMF, but on its own terms. It seems that China now as a far greater ability to set its own terms than it did in the last century.

By Zheng Lifei (China Daily) Updated: 2009-03-28 08:42
Vice Premier: China will aid IMF bond scheme

China is ready to buy bonds issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) if the multilateral financial institution's quota-based contributions fall short of immediate needs, Vice-Premier Wang Qishan wrote in a Friday article for the London Times newspaper.

In an article titled "G20 must look beyond the needs of the top 20", Wang said the IMF should set the scale of contributions by per-capita GDP rather than the size of a country's foreign exchange reserves.

"It is neither realistic nor fair to set the scale of contribution simply by the size of foreign exchange reserves," he wrote, "China is ready to play an active part in exploring ways to raise resources and will contribute to this effort within its ability. We hold that the IMF should mobilize resources through the quota-based system as well as voluntary contributions, striking a balance between the rights and obligations of the contributing countries."

Links to Related China Daily Articles

• China cautioned to lend less to IMF
• Increasing stake in IMF should be voluntary, Wen says
• IMF to set up 2 more technical assistance centers in Africa
• IMF: China's 8% growth this year challenging but possible
• Brown: End western control of IMF, WB
• China may offer IMF $100b during G20 summit: expert
• UK fully supports China's role in IMF
• Major IMF reforms seen at G20 summit

Surviving Ideaicide And Other Perils Of The New Economy

Some of the recent posts for this weblog have been dealing with the creative-destructive aspects on the Web 2.0 business environment, Kevin Kelly's insights for the creative side and commodification for the destructive. Another post dealt with the new Artisan Economy.

What this post is taking a look at are some of the aspects of the social/business environment in which all of this is suppose to be happening. This is to serve as a reminder that having a laptop does not instill instant creativity or guarantee a smooth road to success.

As this New York Times BUSINESS article on February 3, 2008 By JANET RAE-DUPREE tells us in Unboxed: Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work

As humans, we want to believe that creativity and innovation come in flashes of pure brilliance, with great thunderclaps and echoing ahas. Balderdash.

Not only do we have to work hard on our own ideas, we have to maintain an openness to conflicting ideas, going back to what F. Scott Fitzgerald advised. This Los Angeles Times article provides a more indepth perspective.

The modern world is an ever-changing mass of contradictions. Reconciling them is fundamental to success, whether in business or in life.

The need to keeping conflicting ideas in balance is hard enough, but one also has to do so in an environment of increasing complexity. As small business expert by Ivana Taylor review of The Complexity Crisis — Why Keeping it Simple is Not Stupid at Small Business Trends' tells us.

Looking at the current business obsession regarding product proliferation, the long tail, and flat worlds complexity the argument goes has run amok among businesses, both big and small. John Mariotti, former president of Rubbermaid Office Products and Huffy Bicycles, lends perspective and clarity to complexity in his new book The Complexity Crisis. Why too many products, markets and customers are crippling your company and what to do about it.

"Businesses must compete in more complex global markets than ever before. Most companies are seeking double-digit growth in markets growing in single digit rates — or not at all. This quest for growth has led to runaway complexity caused by the proliferation of products, customers, markets, suppliers, services, locations, and more. All of these add costs, which go untracked by even the best accounting systems. Complexity also fragments management focus, wastes time and money, and ultimately reduces shareholder value. The problems grow, but they remain under the radar of management attention. Complexity is arguable, the most insidious, hidden profit drain in today's business world."

What is of greatest interest is how, even succeeding in meeting the above challenges, you keep your ideas alive. One source of inspiration has been referenced before, the Change This Manifesto. This time the pointer comes from Brand Autopsy's johnmoore on 2/1/08 Ideaicide Prevention is Everybody's Business.

"Ideas are usually rejected out of turn for being too 'something' — too fast, too unproven, too far beyond the corporate image. 'Too something' is a reactionary description used to take the edge off ideas that are strong, bold, and a little scary at first sight. Your challenge is to help people discover a means, harmonious with the culture, to accept your concept."

Alan Parr & Karen Ansbaugh Ideaicide: How To Avoid It And Get What You Want * ChangeThis Manifesto *

I am not sure that this has to happen necessarily in a corporate setting. GroupThink, which I suspect is a primary cause only needs two to be contagious. Government is also particularly susceptible to this aliment.

Finally, in this type of environment the chances of unhampered non-stop success are slim and none. As the The Entrepreneurial Mind told us back on 1/30/08 Failure Stinks!. Fortunately, Dr. Cornwall provides a pointer to Bounce.

Barry Moltz's long awaited second book, titled Bounce, has finally arrived. From his (Barry Moltz's) website:

Conventional business wisdom tells us that there is always something to learn from failure. Not true--sometimes it just stinks! Failure that offers no real learning value becomes a big jolt to the basic business belief system.

Barry's gift is that he uses humor to offer lessons that all entrepreneurs can learn from. During his last visit to Belmont, Barry offered some glimpses of what he planned to explore in his new book. Just like with his first book You Need to be a Little Crazy, this book is a must read for entrepreneurs at any stage of their development.

Barry demonstrates that developing the resiliency to 'bounce" through these cycles determines who ultimately will succeed. Using real life business examples, he shows that with true business confidence, we can face our fears, let go of shame and failures, use all our choices, be better risk-takers, and define our own brand of success.

Differences that make a difference

My online persona interacts occasionally with various forums. One benefit of this weblog is that it makes it possible to share knowledgeable and expert insights of one realm with another. Even though the realms are often connected far closer than the standard six degrees of separation, the ability to make our own connections creates new paradigms that can be built upon. It is still a learning process but we can take the same beginning, the same path and the same destination again and still discover new perspectives for oneself and others. This post was a nexus between TED and MIT.

The issues raised by the Fast Company article about Grameenphone needs further thought. I have hopeful confidence in the ability of Iqbal Quadir, Grameen and the MIT Program in Developmental Entrepreneurship to address them. Even though we are speaking of an impact with broad reach, the basic economics can provide lessons to those of us working at a more local level. For anybody interested here is the link to an MIT Sloan panel discussion MIT World » : Global Entrepreneurship: Inefficiency as Opportunity ...conducted prior to Iqbal Quadir's TED talk. There is also one sponsored by Technology Review in which he discusses his views on innovation MIT World » : Emerging Technologies: The Innovators' View . Although the challenges with the current credit crunch seem daunting, these videos give one a perspective on how leaders like Iqbal Quadir deal with them.

Appealing to the Slacktivists

In the last post of this blog I made a defense of slacktivists in general, though I ended up agreeing with so many points made by Evgeny Morozov that slacktivists will still not be able to hold their own convention. This post will also be in support of slacktivists, but this time as an essential audience for change-agent organizations.

My last post took the perspective of one who fits into the slacktivist demographic, though I believe that the demographic is more diverse than appreciated. This time I am going to consider the issue from organizations that need large numbers to directly support their efforts through activism and funding, or to support larger scale efforts to initiate change through other government and social organizations. The Millennium Development Goals involve both approaches in bringing them to fruition.

There are numerous organizations struggling to meet the challenges of implementing the objectives of each of the Millennium Development Goals. These organizations often involve professionals on-the-ground seeking to increase awareness and derive support from a larger and usually less expert base. There is also an overall effort to get developed countries to meet their promise of fully funding the Millennium Development Goals. The Stand Up and Take Action event is an example.

The first set and the second set of activism are natural allies. For the organizations seeking to implement each of the particular objectives of the Millennium Development Goals, the struggle to push the larger agenda is no doubt important, but I cannot see it as a defining goal. Whether or not a certain number of people stand up on October 16th, those organizations working in Africa to eradicate typhoid or to provide universal education in India will still be at work. However, for those working in the second category for global political change, which is what we are talking about, having the first group of on-the-ground change-agents is not enough to positively influence the fundamental source of change in the leading developed countries, the mainstream voting majority. This majority cannot be defined by political affiliation alone because no one makes up a super majority. It does have one general defining aspect and that is, for the most part, for most of the time, non-activist.

Here again, I agree with Evgeny Morozov.

Of course, the ideal case here is when one's participation in digital activism doesn't subtract from -- and instead enhances -- one's eagerness to participate in real-life campaigns.

Now that gives change-agent organization two tasks. One to make sure the the true-hearted and dedicated activists don't lose heart and become part of the Facebook generation wasting their time on Mafia wars.

However, it's also quite possible that a significant portion of the activist population would be morally content with the "slacktivist" option alone, preferring not to get too close to more dangerous activities that are likely to get them in trouble with authorities.

I seriously doubt that anybody who was was of the meddle to protest would not because the Internet just made it too easy. The harder task is getting the uninvolved masses on board.

What we are dealing with from the perspective of social or change-agent organizations promoting their cause is social marketing, and as with social-entrepreneurship it takes a degree of business acumen.

It was dealing with issues of marketing, communications and networking the helped to lead me to the Millennium Development Goals. In a previous post on the blog I looked into the book GROUNDSWELL by Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff which makes the case that either Your Marketing Is Riding The Wave or Its Under Water.

More importantly for this post it provides taxonomy for Web 2.0 usage on the Internet. This I submit is also the different levels of slacktivists.

1. “creators”, who blog on their own web pages,
2. “critics” who post comments,
3. “joiners” who sign up for online communities,
4. “spectators” who read and watch, and finally
5. the unengaged “inactives”

The general understanding of slacktivisits seems to fit under numbers levels 3 and 4, only a small step above the bottom rung of inactives. I still put online creators and critics as being in the slacktivist pool, realizing fully as I have said that writing a blog does not equate in any way from on-the-ground action of groups like Oxfam UK, ONE, Millennium Promise or other similar organizations. Web 2.0 could hopefully help change-agent organizations recruit the unengaged "inactives" and move each rung of the Web 2.0 ladder up, but it is as likely to be other slacktivists higher up on the rungs.

This may fly in the face of our vision of social activists taking a stand like the revolutionaries in Les Miserables, but the concept of effective political change only coming from sit-ins and the risk of arrest, police brutality, or torture as opposed campaigning in the virtual space is to my mind false for liberal democratic countries. I do not believe that such actions alone will accomplish the Millennium Development Goals.

As I said in my last blog post, demonstrations and sit-ins can force the discussion into the open, but at some point the message needs to be taken up the the majority of voters in the democratic countries to put pressure on their governments to put pressure on other governments. It is the responsibility of organizations such as the Millennium End Poverty 2015 Campaign and anybody else supporting these goals to lead such as effort.

It is our responsibility as individuals participating in causes of our choosing to avoid become political commodities by understanding that you are commodified when you lose the ability to change things.

The Power of Many! Music For All?

Small Business Trend's small business expert Steven Teo writes about New Business Ideas: The Power of Many

Termed "crowdsourcing" by Wired Magazine, this trend looks set to be exploited by businesses and entrepreneurs who appreciate the power of crowds and communities:

One site Steven provided was of particular interest because it could potentially serve as a very viable solution for musicians looking for a new path

• Independent music site Amie Street knows economics inside out. It uses demand-driven pricing to let the community dictate the pricing of the tracks it sells on the website. Prices begin at zero and rise up depending on demand and supply factors. Community members recommend their favorite music and give back 70% of proceeds to artists after the first $5 in sales. We like it because it encourage musicians to mobilize their fan bases to support their music.
  

Dealing With 10 things Hated About Web 2.0

The following misanthropic musings were made by gaping void creator Hugh McLeod. He is , somewhat ironically, another source inspiration and sometimes information for this weblog. He is, of course, at a whole different level web 2.0 social pecking order than I am, but he raises some interesting challenges to the ongoing creation of this weblog.

10 things I hate about web 2.0 via gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards" by hugh macleod on 6/6/08

1. Reconciling the huge gap between how interesting and important you tell your clients it all is, versus how interesting and important you actually find it all yourself.

Since this weblog has no clients and no money (except for 14 cents for charity through Squidoo), this is not a problem. Sometimes others find the sites found here interesting and sometimes they don't. It only deals with what I find interesting, even if nobody else does.

2. The endless train of online armchair quarterbacks endlessly trying to engage you with endless rounds of mental masturbation.

This is admittedly annoying. From a self-reflective point of view, spending a good portion of my free time typing this, well mental masturbation might stick but it is for the most part solitary and there is no attempt to pass myself off as an expert.

3. The same usual suspects whining endlessly on about the same usual suspects.

This weblog actually jumps around a lot, presumedly making it less viable as a potential money maker. The question for this weblog is whether and how to deal with past issues. Once a post is created on say bio-fuels is there any reason to worry about doing more? For whatever reason, I sometimes feel like I should be.

4. The idea that spouting endless hyperbole about the latest doohickey widget is actually an interesting, compelling and worthy way for a grown man to spend his free time.

Sprouting no, but having others sprout, especially through video - that's different.

5. The well-intentioned but misguided belief that anonymous loser douchebags are actually entitled to an opinion.

One lonely anonymous loser douchebag arguable, a million anonymous loser douchebags that's your market.

6. People at conference panels, pretending that the only reason they're attending is to offer valuable insight to their fellow man, as opposed to just pimping their wares and/or scouting for consulting gigs.

This is true of all conferences, not just Web 2.o. You can, however, get valuable insights from your fellow man even when they are just pimping their wares and/or scouting for consulting gigs.

7. The pervasive use of the term, "2.0" to describe anything other than internet software e.g. "Love 2.0", "Women 2.0", "Breakup 2.0", "Food 2.0", "Religion 2.0", "Music 2.0", "Poetry 2.0", yak yak yak...

There should be a term that describes the opposite of innovation, which would be what most of us are doing most of the time.

8. Any blogger with higher traffic than my own.

OK, this one is definitely not a worry.

9. The popular but mistaken belief that there is a vast, unstoppable army of people in the world who actually care about this shit.

No, there are just a whole lot of people who care about a whole lot of different shit.

10. The sophomoric conceit that "The Conversation" is two-way. To quote Fran Leibowitz, "The opposite of Talking is not Listening. The opposite of Talking is Waiting".

These are, at a minimum, all two-way conversations. What's different is that everybody is carrying on their own two-way conversation with themselves, adding others just serves to scale up, sometimes exponentially. Placing your words upon the screen and judging your words by your own standards is a form of self-reflective communication. Most times we passively invite others to join in. The fact that they do not does not stop the conversation.

Finally, while mediocrity may be a hallmark of the untold masses, there is never any intention to allege moral failings in others.

Miracle of Melancholia And Failure - It Can Lead To Optimism

The miracle of melancholia by Eric G. Wilson, in the LA Times, has been sitting in my Blogger drafts since February 17 2008.

We're a nation obsessed with being happy, but sometimes feeling bad can do you some good.

In April of 1819, right around the time that he began to suffer the first symptoms of tuberculosis -- the disease that had already killed his mother and his beloved brother, Tom -- the poet John Keats sat down and wrote, in a letter to his brother, George, the following question: "Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?"

Another somewhat similarly minded perspective was found in The Value of Failure

which was recommended by Small Business Trends small business expert Scott Shane back on February 4, 2008.

I don’t usually recommend business books to people because I am not a big fan of most of them. But I need to make an exception here. I want to urge people to read Bounce by Barry Moltz.

As someone who studies entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship for a living, I know that there is a big problem getting good information about the topic. Most start-ups fail, but people don’t like to talk about failure. So we have many more stories about start-up success than start-up failure, even though it should be the other way around.

(more…)

Keats shows us that this struggle with melancholia is nothing new. Eric G. Wilson shows us that what is new is its social stigma.

Implied in this inquiry is an idea that is not very popular these days -- at least not in the United States, which is characterized by an almost collective yearning for complete happiness. That idea is this: A person can only become a fully formed human being, as opposed to a mere mind, through suffering and sorrow. This notion would seem quite strange, possibly even deranged, in a country in which almost 85% of the population claims, according to the Pew Research Center, to be "very happy" or at least "happy."

He goes on to say:

Melancholia, far from error or defect, is an almost miraculous invitation to rise above the contented status quo and imagine untapped possibilities. We need sorrow, constant and robust, to make us human, alive, sensitive to the sweet rhythms of growth and decay, death and life.

I don't believe that Professor Wilson's words should be denied, but they are not in themselves complete enough. The reason that I so often use business links,such as Small Business Trends, is that they are a laboratory in reality, rather than in the academic or virtual world. What the business person experiments with has to work or he or she doesn't survive. Barry Moltz's Bounce is "stories" of facing and overcoming failure, of starting again. Melancholia has its lessons and its value but that should not keep us from engaging optimism.

A Closer Look At Fluid Intelligence

My recent post on 12 Hacks 6 Myths And Other Ways On Amping Your Brainpower, received a comment from Soak Your Head creator Erik Mork of Silver Bay Labs who said...

I think the significance of the Martin Buschkuehl research is that actual intelligence may be increased with daily training on dual-n-back. Which kind of sets it apart from the other approaches mentioned (12 Hacks that Will Amp...). Though, it does have some mutual benefits with them (for instance, working memory is generally increased with these types of training).

My wife and I have built an open source web application that implements the dual-n-back training. If you're curious to try. It's at: http://www.soakyourhead.com/ .

I'm not sure if keeping a blog make s you smarter, but it sure can't hurt ;) Thanks for this interesting post.

His point is definitely valid. My throwing the 12 hacks and 6 myths into the same post was for a more psych-lite article. Not that I am an expert, but I was leaning towards the "keeping busy and cognizant after they lock me out of the office at work" approach. As far as the viability of keeping a blog, it may not make me more intelligent but I am learning new things and keeping connected so hopefully it is doing some good. I did omit the section of the Wired article, intended perhaps to provide some balance, which cited:

David Geary, a professor at the University of Missouri and author of The Origin of Mind, who was not involved with the study, said training in one test generally doesn’t generate gains on a different test.

"Transfer is tough to get," Geary said. "Training in task A doesn’t typically improve performance on task B."

But in this case, subjects trained on a complex version of the so-called "n-back task" -- a difficult visual/auditory memory test -- improved their scores on a set of IQ questions drawn from a German intelligence measure called the Bochumer Matrizen-Test. (The Bochumer Matrizen-Test is a harder version of the well known Ravens Progressive Matrices).

I am impressed with the site that Erik and is wife have created. I don't get the sense that either of them are trained in this scientific field, but their site is informative and seems well balanced. It also does not seem to be connected to any particular research facility. Which seems unfortunate as this appears to be a great opportunity to gather a good deal of "crowd-sourced" data, which is one potential motivation for running this post.

Another motivation is that I find the concept of fluid intelligence interesting from both the biological and cognitive perspective, and it gives me a reason to feature this article from TEDBlog on the amazing intelligence of crows: Joshua Klein on TED.com.

Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he's come up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal and human. (Recorded March 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 10:16.)

The More We Know, The More We Know That Fools and Facts Don't Mix

Seth's Blog had the Fools, facts and the more we know post on 12/5/07. Something I have noticed during this web 2.0 experience is that a good deal of the information found on the web and especially among blogs is derived and repeated from other source. Not that this is necessarily bad but it does raise some issues.

Seth points us to Neal who in turen points us to: Saying more by saying less. Then according to Seth, this post then leads to an extraordinary blog post.

At least that's what Seth tells us but it seems to get away from the point of the first link or at least takes a long road around (truth is that I have not read it all the way through yet). The point of the first link is.

"Certainly the more information we get, the higher the level of ignorance seems to be."

This concept of information glut has been dealt with particularly with regards to e-mails but this seems to be a bit more basic. Easy access to information lets everybody be an expert or at least claim to be one on their blog or website. That means we need to be careful about who we listen to and how we present ourselves. It was probably best said, if I can believe BrainyQuote, by Abraham Lincoln,

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."